Let me begin by saying that I am not a racial provocateur and, as I hope will become evident in the course of this reply, I do not have a chip on my shoulder that causes me to seek confrontation with the African-American community. In fact, I do not see myself in confrontation with the African-American community at all. My fight is with the African-American left.

When a well-meaning Democrat in Florida designs a butterfly ballot to help elderly Democrats vote their ticket but inadvertently confuses them instead, and when this becomes a pretext for Jesse Jackson and other demagogues to charge Republicans with a plot to “disenfranchise the descendants of slaves,” that is racial provocation. If you’re looking for a racial provocateur, Jesse Jackson should be your model. Jackson’s strategy is a cynical triad: provocations, negotiations and then “reparations” (for Jackson, of course, and his family and their well-heeled friends).